| Today, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson got to respond to Republicans who attacked her record as a judge, suggested that she's soft on crime, specifically child-porn offenders, and painted her as a reliably liberal vote on the Supreme Court. Here are some takeaways from the day. 1. A forceful pushback against child-porn sentencing claims  Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on the second day of her confirmation hearings Tuesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | It is the most scurrilous claim against Jackson — that as a federal judge, she has been weak on sentencing child-porn offenders. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has been the primary driver of these claims, taking her words and sentences out of context to do it. "As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth," Jackson said of Hawley's accusations. She recounted how, when sentencing a weeping defendant to prison, she shared the experience of one victim of child pornography who was so paralyzed by what happened to her that she couldn't leave her house. 2. Defending her role as a defender Jackson would be the first justice in decades to have experience defending people accused of crimes, though the court regularly hears cases in which convicted criminals' lives are in their hands. Republicans have used her relatively unusual background — plus the fact liberal groups support Jackson — to argue that she is soft on crime. It is a potentially potent political attack, given that Republicans see rising crime rates across the nation as a major midterm issue. Jackson, with the help of Democrats, pushed back on that, saying that her experience as a public defender gave her empathy for criminal defendants — but that coming from a family with many police officers, she also understands the value of law enforcement and the criminal code. "I care deeply about the rule of law," she said. "And I know that in order for us to have a functioning society, we have to have people being held accountable for committing crimes." 3. Trying to pin her down as a liberal "Do the First Amendment free-speech protections apply equally to conservative and liberal protesters?" Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked her. (Yes, Jackson answered.) "Do you believe the individual right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right?" he asked next. (The Supreme Court has established that right, she said.) What about court-packing? Republicans wanted to know. (She said that's not her call to make, noting now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett gave a similar answer at her confirmation hearing.) Republicans also tried to pin her down as tied to critical race theory (she said that has nothing to do with her work as a judge) and as a liberal activist. (She has been a favorite of liberal organizations.) Here are more takeaways from the hearing. "I don't that think anyone can look at my record and say that it is pointing in one direction or another, that it is supporting one viewpoint or another," she said. Why is Biden going to Europe now? On Thursday, President Biden will attend an emergency NATO meeting on Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Brussels. He'll then travel to Poland on Friday. Here's more about his big trip: Why does it matter?: Symbolism and solidarity, mainly. Biden's trip seems mainly focused on showing and ensuring that the United States and its allies are a united front against Russian President Vladimir Putin. It's a big deal when the U.S. president heads toward a war zone. Already, Biden's vice president and secretary of state have been in the area. "The most fundamental deliverable is for the U.S. president to show up at the time of the greatest crisis in European security since the end of the Second World War," Ian Lesser, the vice president of the German Marshall Fund, told my colleagues. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden is going to coordinate more military aid, work on the refugee crisis and work on more sanctions against Russia. Will Biden go to Ukraine?: It's very unlikely, though the former president of Ukraine has pushed for it. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a tweet Sunday that there are no plans for the Biden to travel to Ukraine. (This is largely for security reasons — U.S. presidents do travel to war zones, but they go to ones where U.S. combat troops are stationed. That's not the case in Ukraine.) | 
Email 
0 Comments:
Post a Comment